‘Thokk will wail Nought quick or dead With dry eyes For carl’s son care I. Balder’s bale-fire. Let Hel hold her own.’ So Balder remained in Helheim. Such was the sad conclusion of the myth of which the memory is kept up even in these days. For in Norway and Sweden--nay, in some parts of Scotland, the _bale-fires_ celebrating the bale or death of the sun-god are lighted on the day when the sun passes the highest point in the ecliptic. Balder will not, said tradition, remain for ever in Helheim. A day will come, the twilight of the gods, when the gods themselves will be destroyed in a final victorious contest with the evil powers. And then, when a new earth has arisen from the deluge which destroys the old, Balder, the god of Peace, will come from Death’s home to rule over this regenerate world. A sublime myth--if indeed it can be called a _myth_. CHAPTER XI. MYTHOLOGIES AND FOLK-TALES. [Sidenote: Diversity of myths.] If we found it difficult to reduce to a consistent simplicity the religious ideas of the Aryan races, what hope have we to find any thread through the labyrinth of their unbridled imagination in dealing with more fanciful subjects? The world is all before them where to choose; nature, in her multitudinous works and ever-changing shows, is at hand to give breath to the faculty of myth-making, and lay the foundation of all the stories which have ever been told. The two elements concurrent to the manufacture of mythologies are the varying phenomena in nature, and that which is called the anthropomorphic (personifying) faculty in man. I do not mean by this that all myths represent natural appearances. Some simply relate events, real human experiences; all that is mythic about such stories is that they are _misplaced_. Some one has gone through the adventures, but not the person of whom they are told. Other tales transfer in a like fashion human experiences to beings who are not human, to animals, to trees and streams, maybe even to implements, to spades and ploughs, to hatchets, swords, or ships. All these may be subject of mere tale-telling. But what I understand by mythology are the stories related of the gods--at all events, stories of supernatural beings who are almost gods. And among the Aryan folk, as the gods are in almost every instance the personifications of phenomena or powers of nature, the myths of widest extension were necessarily occupied with these.